What's the strangest bit of character research you've ever done?

[randomling]

So you're working up to playing a new character. It might be in a D&D game. It might be in a more modern setting. The character is very different from you in background and experience, so naturally you do a little research into what your character's life would be like. What's the strangest - or most unlikely - thing you've ever tried, or read about, simply to play a character well? Or run a good game in an unfamiliar environment?

Right now I'm playing a former soldier of the US Army, who was, essentially, kicked out. So I'm reading the Uniform Code of Military Justice to find a good reason and the appropriate punishments and language. This is quite unlikely for me, as I'm neither American, nor in the military.

What about you?

 

[Greybar]

strangest research: the practice and history of transsexual operations at Johns Hopkins - what they did and why they stopped doing the operations. This was for a game that was theoretically Call of Chuthulu in modern day game in college. The character was a man in the midst of the preop therapy. He/she was an artists whose paintings kept leading down a strange and occult plotline. Very much of a mindtwist campaign - all of the characters were pretty dysfunctional if I remember correctly.

john

 

[egarvue]

The strangest research that I did was for a character's background as an expert on slime molds and other weird fungi; it was for an X-Files-ish GURPS campaign, relating to a case involving strange fungi attacks. Let me tell you, slime molds are freekin' WEIRD...

 

[d4]

for Brother Onion, a lecherous, impious priest / forgery expert in a GURPS fantasy Renaissance campaign, i had to refamiliarize myself with the Decameron, a book of 14th century Italian erotica.

the campaign before that was a GURPS near-future sci fi game, and i played Wong Shan Mao, the starship's Chinese chief engineer from Singapore. he happened to be a devout Taoist, and also had a habit of consulting the I Ching before any major decision. i brought a copy of the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching with me to every game session, and i would often generate hexagrams and look them up in the I Ching during play. oftentimes, even though what the Oracle said made no sense to us players, the GM would nod knowingly...

we even ended up naming the ship through the I Ching. no one could think of a decent name, so Mao consulted the Oracle. one of the lines of the hexagram he got stated, "It is bad luck to ignore your sacred tortoise." since our ship was vaguely turtle-shaped, we immediately became the crew of the inimitable S.S. Sacred Tortoise.

 

[Wombat]

My whole LIFE is strange research for rpgs!

In fact one of my fellows back in grad school days said, "He just takes classes and does research to make for more in-depth games." This guy was also one of my fave players

I have one large bookshelf dedicated to mythology, folklore, magic and religions so that on a moment's notice I can pull down the Popol Vuh, the Elder Edda, or works by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. I have pamphlets on costs for buying 19th C. American uniform parts, on how to conduct a seance, and on flintnapping. I read voraciously, both fiction and non-fiction, leading to my new nickname, Bibliovore. I own dictionaries for German, French, Latin, Spanish, Italian ... Basque, Ojibway, Lakota, Finnish, Swahili, and Medieval Welsh.

Overall, despite my day job, I continually research notions that catch my eye and then put them into my games.

Leads to some rather odd situations

 

[Ferret]

Your so cool.

I was researching raccoons, and I know stuff about them them. They have over 400 nerve endings in their hands, they oldest in captivity was 21, they are usually solitary but someone once found 23 in the same cave, and an acceptable spelling of the name is racoon.

 

[Oni]

I did a lot of research of methods of exection, and how they were carried out and such (especially beheadings) for a character I'm currently playing that is the son of an executioner.

 

[Silver Moon]

For a campaign in the Forgotten Realms Orient two years ago I researched what it was like growing up as a teenage girl in the Japanese Emporer's household. And not that research has proved very useful, as my 10-year-old has adopted that as her persona for the Society for Creative Anachronism.

For tonight's game, set in an AD&D/Boot Hill hybrid world, I did online research about Vault and Safe manufacturers in 1881. I guess that would qualify for somewhat out-of-left-field, but I needed info to properly develop and play the safecracker now working with the James Gang.

 

[Bloodsparrow]

for Brother Onion, a lecherous, impious priest / forgery expert in a GURPS fantasy Renaissance campaign, i had to refamiliarize myself with the Decameron, a book of 14th century Italian erotica.

That's some great reading... Absolutely HI-larious stuff there.

For a Call Of Cthulhu game I had a character who was very... Esoteric. And much of her backstory involved references to the Decameron... Nobody ever got it though. They knew that something was off about it, but they couldn't quite put their fingers on it. (Unfotunetly, I don't think any of them had read the Decameron. Which is a shame, because, like I said, 14th century Italian erotica is some great reading.) I made an effort to find applicable references from lots of different sources in literature. At one point, I compared our Professor at MU to "Christian" in "A Pilgrim's Progress"... That really freaked some people out. I never really figured out why they were desturbed that my character had read that book... But it did.

Well... Let's see...

Playing a Bone Gnawer (Homeless garou) in a WW:TA LARP, somebody gave me "The Dumpster Diver's Handbook", and we went out on a couple of runs. That was fun.

 

[Dirigible]

I once spent four years living in a hobbit re-enactment camp in Kazakhstan (http://www.theonering.net/perl/newsview/8/998909177) to prepare for playing a halfling.


Turns out we were playing DarkSun, so it was all in vain !